The courtroom was crowded with lawyers, reporters, and other defendants. There were families, friends, and witnesses, the usual mix, but mostly I saw the other lawyers; they filled the space before the bar, motionless, as if in my absence they’d claimed the right of judgment. I searched their faces as I entered the room, flanked by guards, steel on my wrists. What did I search for? A friendly smile. A nod. Anything from the life I used to have. But I got nothing. The eyes turned away, or they glazed, as if looking at a stranger. So I was led past them, beyond them, to the defense table where I’d sat a thousand times as one of their number; and there was Douglas, who used to be my friend, and with him was Detective Mills. They watched me from the prosecution table, and like the others, they’d found veils for their eyes.
I’d prepared myself for this moment, in the small predawn hours, and so was able to keep my back straight as I assumed a position behind the chair reserved for the accused. The manacles clanked as I placed my hands on the back of that chair, and the bailiffs stepped back. A quiet descended on the room, remarkable only in its completeness. Normally, there was a background hum, as lawyers muttered behind raised hands, bailiffs maintained order, and defendants practiced lines they hoped would sway the judge. I’d heard people pray and I’d heard people weep. Some screamed obscenities and were manhandled from the court. I’d heard it all, a daily cacophony that every lawyer learned to tune out, but I’d never encountered a silence as expectant as this.
The judge was the same older woman who’d given such heartfelt condolences to me on the day after my father’s body had been discovered. Even now her eyes were not unkind. I looked from her to Douglas, who seemed uncertain for a moment. But then he turned my way, and he straightened to a more predatory stance when he saw me watching. There would be no help there; he was committed, and would fight me every step of the way.
The judge spoke, and even though she spoke softly, her words were an avalanche in the silence. “Bailiff,” she commanded. “Remove Mr. Pickens’s handcuffs, please.”
A murmur ran through the double row of attorneys seated before the bar. Douglas leaned into the prosecution table.
“I object, Your Honor. The defendant is accused of murder.”
The judge cut him off. “Are you suggesting that attorney Pickens presents some physical threat to this court?” Her mockery was thinly masked, and I saw a faint blush creep into the district attorney’s neck.
“The defendant is in custody. The defendant is accused of murdering his own father.”
“The defendant is a member of this bar! He will be treated as such until such time as he is proven guilty. Do I make myself clear?”
I felt a lump in my throat and an overwhelming gratitude for her words.
“Yes, Your Honor,” the DA said. “Perfectly clear.”
“Good. Bailiff, remove the cuffs.” The bailiff stepped forward and I held out my hands. The cuffs fell away. I wanted to thank her but could only nod.
The judge looked at me more closely. “Will counsel approach the bench?” she said. I hesitated, unsure if I was included in her summons. “That means you, too, Mr. Pickens,” she said. I rounded the table, nearly brushing shoulders with the DA, and together we approached the bench. We had barely arrived when Douglas addressed the judge in a harsh whisper.
“I protest again, Your Honor. This man is here as a defendant, not as a lawyer. This display is undermining my position in this courtroom and in this case.”
The judge leaned forward. “And I have made my position very clear on this, as well. Unlike you, Mr. DA, I will await the evidence before I convict this man, in my mind or in any other manner. He has served as an officer of this court for ten years, and I am not willing to pretend otherwise.”
“I want my objection on the record.”
“Fine. On the record. But this is my courtroom, and I will run it as I see fit. Mr. Pickens will not be treated like a common street thug.”
“Justice is supposed to be blind, Your Honor.”
“Blind but not stupid,” the judge responded. Then she looked directly at me. “And not without some feeling.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I managed to say.
She studied my face for long seconds before speaking. “How did you come by that black eye, Mr. Pickens?”
My fingers moved of their own accord, touching the swollen purple flesh beneath my left eye. “Nothing serious, Your Honor. A disagreement with another inmate. Earlier this morning.”
“Bailiff?” She turned her eyes on the bailiff.
He cleared his throat. “One of the prisoners was trying to intimidate him, Your Honor. But just verbally. Mr. Pickens started it.”
“That’s not the entire story, Your Honor.”
She looked back down at me. “Would you like to elaborate?”
“It’s not important.” I thought of the inmate across the pod. Although I’d never represented him, I’d seen him in and around court for years. He was a drug addict and a wife beater. He’d come straight for me as soon as the cell doors opened and we lined up for breakfast.
The judge, however, continued to hold my eyes, and it was clear that she wanted an answer, so I shrugged. “He wanted my orange juice, Your Honor.”
She turned her hawkish eyes on the district attorney. “You assured me this man would be kept out of the general population,” she said, and looking at her intent features, I realized something. She had signed the arrest warrant. She felt responsible.
“I did, Your Honor. I cannot control events inside the jail.”
Again her eyes found mine; they moved over my face, and in them I saw a profound sadness.
“Very well,” she said. “That will do.”
We returned to our respective places and the proceeding continued. The judge advised me of the charges against me, first-degree murder, and informed me of my right to an attorney.
“Do you wish to have an attorney to represent you, Mr. Pickens?”
“No, Your Honor.” At my words, a ripple moved through the lawyers assembled behind me, and I had another revelation. They wanted the case, each one of them; it would be a high-profile one, with lots of press. Television interviews, newspaper, radio-even a loss would make a reputation for the attorney who represented me. A victory and the attorney might succeed Ezra himself. “I intend to represent myself,” I said. The last thing I wanted was another person prying for a truth better left uncovered.
“Sign the waiver,” I was told. A bailiff handed me the form wherein I waived my right to court-appointed counsel. This was a mere formality. Only the indigent qualified for state-sponsored lawyers. I signed the form and the bailiff passed it up.
Now we came to the crux of the matter. Normally, this would have concluded a defendant’s first appearance. Later, he would face a probable-cause hearing, wherein the state carried the burden of convincing a judge that sufficient probable cause existed to bind the defendant over to superior court, there to stand trial for whatever felony charge he faced. Once past probable cause, a person could request bail, but all of this took time. And there was one significant problem, and I knew of only one way around it.
“Your Honor,” I said. “I move for an expedited bail hearing.”
Douglas surged to his feet. “I object, Your Honor. I most strenuously object.”
“Sit down,” the judge said, exasperation clear on her withered features. “Of course you object.” She turned her attention to me, laced her fingers, and leaned into her words. “This is very unusual, Mr. Pickens. You know that as well as I. There are procedures to be followed. Steps. We’ll need to have the probable-cause hearing. Your case will have to be bound over to superior court.” She paused, as if embarrassed by her lecture. Clearly she was puzzled.
“I waive probable cause,” I said, and my words generated a windstorm of conversation among the lawyers seated behind me. The judge leaned back, as surprised as the rest. No defense attorney going to trial waives probable cause. The state has to show its case at the probable-cause hearing. Not all of it, necessarily, but the broad strokes. It’s a perfect opportunity to probe for strengths and weaknesses. Beyond that, there is also the possibility that the judge will find insufficient probable cause and dismiss the charges. I knew this, of course, but I knew something else, as well. Douglas would object to any local judge hearing the matter. Too much bias, he’d claim. The judge would have to recuse. Another judge would be brought in, someone from out of county. And that would take time, time in jail, time behind bars. It could be days.
Gradually, the buzz of conversation faded and the courtroom settled again into near-perfect silence.
“Are you aware of the ramifications of your request?” the judge asked, rustling beneath her robes. “The probable-cause hearing is one of the cornerstones of procedural due process. I am loath to proceed at this point, Mr. Pickens. I fear that your judgment may be clouded.”
I focused on a point beyond the judge and looked neither right nor left as I spoke. “Shall I renew my motion, Your Honor?”
She sighed, and her words descended into the courtroom as if weighted down with regret. “Very well, Mr. Pickens. Let the record show that the defendant has waived his right to a hearing on probable cause and moves this Court for an expedited bail hearing.” She raised her voice as Douglas came to his feet. “A motion that this Court is inclined to grant.”
“I object,” Douglas almost shouted.
The judge settled back into her chair and waved a narrow hand. “Approach,” she commanded. “Both of you.” At the bench, she looked down on us with the stern disapproval of a schoolmistress and used the same parchment hand to cover the microphone. Douglas opened his mouth to speak, but she rode him down with iron-shod words. “What is the problem here, Douglas? You’ve arrested him, charged him, and brought him before this Court. Do you honestly think that he’s a flight risk?… No? Neither do I. Now, I’ve seen your evidence, and between us, it’s got holes in it. But that’s your bailiwick, not mine. What’s mine is this decision.” She looked pointedly at my face, and I felt her eyes linger on the injuries. “You intend to rebut these charges, do you not, Mr. Pickens?”
“I do.”
“And you intend to do so in court. Is that not also true?”
“Yes.”
“So you’ll be here.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
“There, Douglas,” the judge said. “He wouldn’t miss it.” I thought I heard teeth grind. “Now, we are off the record and speaking in private, and since I will not preside over the trial, I am going to say what I must.” She directed her next words at me. “I signed the warrant because I had no choice. On paper, probable cause to arrest did exist, and if I’d not signed it, some other judge would have.” She turned to the district attorney. “I don’t think he did it, Mr. DA, and if you quote me on that, I’ll deny it. But I’ve known this man for ten years, and I cannot believe he killed his father. I won’t. So you can stand up in this court and argue against bail. You can rant and rave. Your choice. But I’ll not have this man put back into the general population. That’s my discretion. My prerogative.”
I looked at Douglas, whose calcified features barely moved as he spoke. “It will stink of favoritism, Your Honor.”
“I’m sixty-nine years old, and have no plans to run for reelection. Do you think I give a damn? Now, step back. Both of you.”
My feet carried me back to the defense table, where I sat down. I risked a glance at Douglas, who was red-faced and studiously ignoring Detective Mills.
“Mr. Pickens,” the judge said. I came to my feet. “Do you have anything further you wish to offer the Court in support of your motion?”
“No, Your Honor.” I sat down, grateful to the judge for many things. Standing before this crowd to argue the reasons why I should be trusted outside of lockup would have been unpleasant at best. She had spared me that humiliation.
“Anything from the state?” she asked. If Douglas wanted to raise hell, he could. He could argue a great many points, many of which would make sense. He could make the judge look bad, and I hoped he would not do that. Slowly, he stood, his eyes on the tabletop, stretching the moment until it almost burst.
“The state requests only that bail be reasonable, Your Honor.”
Again, an excited stir ran through the packed courtroom, an energy wave that broke against my back before receding into yet another hushed expectancy.
“Bail is set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” the judge said. “The defendant is bound over to superior court and remanded into custody until such time that bail is satisfied. This court will stand in recess for fifteen minutes.” Then she banged her gavel once and rose to her feet, looking small and withered inside the black robe of her office.
“All rise,” the bailiff thundered, and so I did, then watched in stillness as she slipped through the door behind her bench and the courtroom erupted into unabashed speculation.
I looked at Douglas, who had not moved. Muscles worked in his jaw as he stared at the door through which the judge had exited. Then his head swiveled, as if he felt me. He gestured to the bailiffs, and within seconds the cuffs were back on. Our eyes locked. Mills mouthed near-silent words into his ear, but he continued to ignore her. There was something in his eyes, and it was something unexpected. I knew this even though I could not recognize what it was. I knew only that it was not the normal look I’d seen him give other defendants. Then he surprised me by smiling. He stepped to my side, and his voice was like warm oil.
“I’d say that went rather well for you, Work.” Mills remained at the table, her face inscrutable. Behind us, several lawyers turned to watch, but none approached. We existed in a pocket of silence that seemed to belong to us alone. Even the bailiffs felt momentarily insubstantial. “You should be back on the street within a couple hours.”
I tried to pin him with my eyes, but in the orange coveralls and steel bracelets, I’d lost that power. His smile blossomed, as if he, too, had arrived at the same conclusion. “Why are you talking to me?” I asked.
“Because I can,” he replied.
“You’re a real ass, Douglas. I wonder how I’ve missed it all these years.”
His smile vanished. “You missed it because you wanted to miss it, like all defense lawyers. You want the deal. You want to be my buddy, so I’ll make your job easier. It’s a game and always has been. You know it as well as I do.” His eyes flicked left and right and he raised his voice ever so slightly. “But the game’s over, and I don’t have to play it anymore. So enjoy your little victory. The next judge won’t be so easy on you, and you can rest assured that I won’t be.”
Again, something felt odd, something in his eyes, maybe, something in what he said or how he said it. I tried to figure it out, when suddenly it became clear. Douglas was playing to the audience. Lawyers were watching, and Douglas was playing to them. I’d never seen him grandstand before. Looking at his face, sorting this out, a question occurred to me. I’d thought about it the night before, yet I had almost forgotten it. Before I’d considered my words, they were out, and their effect was immediate.
“Why did you let me go to the crime scene?” I asked.
Douglas looked uncomfortable. His eyes darted at the surrounding lawyers, then settled back on me. His voice dropped.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“The day they found his body, when I asked for permission to go to the crime scene. I didn’t think you’d agree; no reasonable district attorney would have. But you did. You almost ordered Mills to show me the body. Why did you do that?”
“You know why I let you go,” he said.
“For Jean.”
“For Jean. That’s right.”
A silence stretched in the wake of his words. For both of us, Jean had that power, which was probably the only thing that remained common to us both.
“It won’t help you as much as you think,” he said, referring to my presence at the crime scene. “I won’t allow it to.”
“Maybe it already has.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that a man has a lot of time to think in jail, Douglas. A whole lot of time.”
I was taunting him, and he finally realized it. But I’d scored a point; I’d made him doubt, if just for an instant. His face closed down like a carnival ride. The power just drained away, leaving everything still. For an instant, we had an eye thing going, the kind of unspoken communication I’d only had once or twice in my life. It was not so much a message as a feeling, one of cold, the kind I’d expected to find in jail yet, strangely, had not. But like that cell, his eyes were empty, dark, and timeless. Then some unfathomable emotion twisted his mouth into a cruel smile, and with a nod to the bailiffs, he sent me away.
The next hours dragged, as I waited, perhaps in vain, for someone to bail me out. They’d given me a phone again, and I’d called the only person I could. But Barbara was not there, or she chose not to answer. So I left a message for my wife and waited to see if she would leave me to rot.
They put me in a padded detox cell down the hall from central processing. The judge’s doing, I guessed. At some time, the walls may have been white. Now they were a mixture of browns, like burled wood. At times, I wanted to throw myself at them, scream as if I were indeed strung out. I’d never lived a longer day. The room seemed to shrink with each passing hour, and I came to wonder just how much my wife had come to loathe me. Would she leave me in jail out of spite? I honestly couldn’t say.
Eventually, they came for me, processed me in reverse. I tipped the stained manila envelope onto the counter. My watch spilled out, followed by my wallet, which contained money, credit cards, identification. All present and accounted for; I signed the little piece of paper that said so. They gave me back my clothes-wrinkled, my belt, my shoes. And as I put them on, I felt the change come upon me. I became a human being again, and again I passed through the jailhouse doors, this time walking into the musty lobby, where normal people waited for people like me. What did I expect? Barbara? A faceless bail bondsman? Truthfully, I had not thought about it, not since I’d first felt underwear against my skin. In the mounting excitement of my rebirth into the human race, I expected to walk beneath blue skies, breathe fresh air, and eat a decent meal. My future was so uncertain, that was all I could expect. I did not expect Hank Robins. I did not expect what he would eventually tell me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
He gave me a crooked smile, one that showed his chipped front tooth. “I should ask you.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
There were two other people in the room. One was a washed-out woman who could have been thirty or could have been fifty. She sat on the hard plastic chair, head tilted against the wall, mouth open; she reeked of tobacco and hard living, all wrinkle and no laugh line. Her sunburned thighs hung loosely under cutoffs too short for a teenager. She clutched her purse like a talisman, and I wondered how long she’d been waiting, and for whom. The other person was a uniformed cop. I watched him sign in at the bulletproof window, then check his weapon into one of the steel lockboxes mounted on the wall. He never turned his back on us, not completely, and Hank watched him with ill-concealed distress. I knew that Hank did not wish to be associated with me under my current circumstances, and I wondered what could have brought him to see me.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s talk outside. I’ve had enough of this place.”
Hank nodded around another smile. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Place gives me the screamin’ willies.”
Outside, the air was a tonic, and we leaned against the chest-high concrete wall and watched the traffic crawl along Main Street. It was late afternoon, the sun low and golden in the sky. Two of the district criminal courts were still in session and there were a few defendants lingering about, waiting for their cases to be disposed of. I’d seen two attorneys in the hall as we left, but there were none outside, a fact for which I was grateful.
“You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” I asked.
“No, sorry. But hang on a sec.” Before I could tell him not to worry about it, Hank had approached one of the few people scattered along the wall. When he returned, he had a crumpled pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. He handed them to me.
“Guy over there,” he said and gestured with his thumb, “he was in court today, same as you. He said, ‘Give ’em hell.’ ”
I lit a cigarette and wondered briefly what the guy’s crime had been. I tucked the pack in my shirt pocket.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Hank. But you’re not the person I expected to see.”
He leaned against the wall, back to the passing traffic, and crossed his arms. He didn’t look at me right away.
“I was in court this morning, too,” he finally said. “Came up to talk to you and caught your performance. I figured somebody ought to call your wife, seeing as how she wasn’t there. Thought somebody should tell her to arrange for bail.”
“I tried to call her.”
Hank nodded, looked at me with something like pity. “Me, too. No answer. But I wasn’t in stir, so I went to see her.” Hank looked up at the roofline of the jail, where it connected to the courthouse. “She didn’t answer when I rang the doorbell, so I went around back. I found her on the patio, sipping iced tea and reading Cosmo.”
A silence fell between us, and I knew that telling me this made Hank uncomfortable. “Maybe she didn’t know,” I said, meaning my court appearance.
“She knew,” Hank said. “She looked guilty as hell when she saw me.”
“She knew, and she wasn’t going to bail me out?”
“Not as bad as all that. She’d made some calls, she said, and was waiting for the money to be put together.”
“What calls?” I asked. Hank shrugged.
“Didn’t ask. Don’t know. But she asked me if I would meet you.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
Hank twitched and then patted his pocket. “I almost forgot. She asked me to give you this.” He handed me a note, folded twice. I recognized her stationery. She used to spray perfume on it. Because she loved me, she said. I opened the note and read it. It was brief and unscented.
“She wants me to know that she still loves me, very much, and that some dirty bum stole my dog.”
“I know,” Hank said. “I read it.”
I refolded the note and put it in my pocket.
“I’m sorry, man,” Hank said. “Life’s a bitch.”
I nodded.
“So is your wife.”
“Why are you here, Hank?” I asked again.
“Maybe to save your ass,” he said, and I looked up from my shoes, searching his face for the punch line. “I’m serious,” he said. “Look. I had my doubts, okay? I mean, who wouldn’t? Fifteen million dollars is a lot of jack. So, sure, I thought you might have popped him. But I told you I’d check up on Alex, and I did.”
Had I been walking, I would have stumbled. Driving, I would have wrecked. “What does Alex have to do with any of this?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe something. That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“Let’s back this up, Hank. What the hell are you talking about?”
Hank took my arm, turned me toward the wide, shallow stairs that led off the concrete platform. “Not here, okay? In the car.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Raleigh,” he said.
“Raleigh,” I repeated.
“To ask a few questions.”
“Of whom?” I asked. We reached the top of the stairs. Beneath us, the sidewalk beckoned. I hesitated, wanting answers. Hank’s hand settled on my shoulder, seeming to urge me down the stairs.
“Just keep walking,” he said, and something in his voice made me turn. He was looking back over his shoulder, and I followed his gaze to the courthouse door. Sunlight gilded the glass, and I did not understand. I almost missed it. Then a thin tissue of cloud blotted the sun’s face, and I saw him there, behind the glass: Douglas, watching us, a frown of concentration on his heavy features.
“Forget about him,” Hank told me. “He’s tomorrow’s problem.”
I turned away, let the private investigator lead me down the stairs. “I’m parked over here,” Hank told me. We walked down the hill, past three parked sheriff’s cars, the secure judge’s entrance, and a street crew that worked with loud, foul-smelling equipment that ripped at a small section of asphalt. Hank gestured down the narrow side street that ran along the unmarked cemetery where free blacks had been buried almost two hundred years earlier. We turned left, and the noise dwindled behind us. I started to feel like myself again, less like a punch-drunk fighter. We separated at his car, a dark green Buick sedan, and I stepped off the curb and walked to the passenger door. He unlocked the doors, but I caught his eye over the roof before I got in.
“Alex?” I asked, but he ignored me, and I felt his door slam shut. The car rocked, as if agitated; so I got in, and took my question with me.
“It’s not her real name,” Hank told me five seconds later. “That’s why I couldn’t find a record of her at the hospital in Charlotte. Jean was in the system, plain as day, but no Alex Shiften. To me, that stank of something, but I couldn’t tell what. Not until I went back with that picture you gave me.”
“So you got the picture?” I asked numbly, dealing with the little detail because I could not focus on the great big one that sat like an elephant on my lap.
“Early,” Hank responded. “A little after five, and then I drove back to Charlotte in time for the shift change at the hospital. I flashed the photo, asked my questions, and eventually found the right guy, an orderly with a deep appreciation for Benjamin Franklin.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He knew Alex all right, but not by that name. According to him, her name is Virginia Temple. She’d been at Charter Hills for three months before Jean showed up. Apparently, they hit it off pretty quick. For a couple months there, your sister spoke to no one but her.”
“Virginia,” I repeated. The name felt made up. Alex Shiften was too hard to be a Virginia, too sharp, like calling a razor blade a butter knife.
“It gets worse,” Hank said. “She transferred in from Dorothea Dix.”
“The hospital in Raleigh?”
“The state hospital in Raleigh. The place where they keep the criminally insane.”
“Not everybody there is a criminal,” I said. “Just some.”
“That’s right. Just some. But some of those eventually get out, and usually they’re transferred to a place like Charter Hills. A stepping-stone to normal living, like a halfway house.”
“And you think that may be the case with Alex?”
Hank shrugged.
“Well shit,” I said.
“Exactly,” Hank replied, and started the car. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
He dropped the transmission into drive.
“I’m not supposed to leave the county,” I said. “It’s part of the standard bail arrangement.”
He put the car back into park and turned to face me. “Your call, Work. I can drive you home if you want and check it out myself. No sweat at all.”
I didn’t want the judge to regret her kindness, but this was too important to play by the rules; and rules, I had recently decided, weren’t necessarily good. I’d played my whole life by the book, and that life wasn’t looking very pretty right now. “Screw it. Let’s go.”
“That’s my boy.”
“But we have to make a couple stops on the way out of town.”
“It’s your life,” Hank said, accelerating away from the curb. “I’m just driving.”